BLURRED LINES

Theater companies are breaking down barriers between art and audience

Amusical number is kicking into high gear on a Friday night at Ion Theatre in Hillcrest, and the show’s entire cast is onstage for the occasion. ■ So, by the way, is most of the audience. ■ This is a scene from Ion’s puckishly titled “Ass, or A Midsummer Night’s Fever” — a riff on Shakespeare in which the actual fairy character Puck magically transforms the head of a hapless actor into that of an ass, aka donkey. ■ Ion has reconceived “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” as a ’70s disco party in which game playgoers join in the revels, doing the hustle (with lessons provided) alongside the actors and generally enjoying a level of interactivity rarely seen at your average Shakespeare play. ■ The show is just one example of a hot phenomenon in the wider theater world: productions that seek to blur or even obliterate conventional lines between audience and art, and put patrons right in the middle of the mix. ■ “I can’t tell you exactly why it feels as though it’s in the zeitgeist right now,” says Alex Timbers, the in-demand young director whose immersive off-Broadway show “Here Lies Love” was the hottest ticket in New York over the summer.

“But I think one thing that’s true today is that, you know, (even) children have iPads. People are used to touching a screen and (getting) some sort of response. We’re interested in interactivity. We’re narcissistic, increasingly, in our culture, so we’re interested in interacting as much as possible with our entertainment.

“So it seemed to me a natural progression to something like ‘Here Lies Love,’ where you’re cast as the mourner at (slain Filipino opposition leader Benigno) Aquino’s funeral, or as a participant in a political rally. It seemed natural that that would be exciting (to people).”

Timbers, who hits San Diego this week to direct the Old Globe’s new (non-interactive) musical “The Last Goodbye,” collaborated on “Here Lies Love” with musicians David Byrne and Fatboy Slim, creators of the concept album on which the show is based.

The piece centers on a modern saga: the life and times of Imelda Marcos, the former first lady of the Philippines who became famous for her extravagant shoe collection. Like the Ion show, though, “Here Lies Love” uses the setting of a disco to immerse the audience in the story.

That connection between the two projects, say Ion co-founders and “Midsummer” co-directors Glenn Paris and Claudio Raygoza, is coincidental; Ion began brainstorming for the show before Timbers’ production premiered at New York’s Public Theater.

But the two do acknowledge a debt of inspiration to “Sleep No More,” another New York show that was among the first in a wave of immersive shows that also includes the off-Broadway hit “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812.”

“Sleep No More,” based loosely on Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” unfolds in a five-story former warehouse refashioned as a supposedly abandoned hotel. Playgoers wear masks as they wander through rooms where actors perform silent scenes.